I had the best night of sleep last night. I dreamt that I was at my old apartment on Houston Street except someone else was living there. I said, “Who are you?” and she said, “I’m Tiprin Follett.” I told her that she couldn’t be, I was, and she said she had taken on my identity. I told her she couldn’t do that, but she had.

Then I dreamt I was in a castle tower, not quite a castle, more like a haunted house, and I had an old witchy mother who was sewing furiously on a machine downstairs. I saw what she was sewing with her hands. It was a braid. It was a wide braid with only a few hairs and it appeared to miles long. My sister came and she opened the door and asked if I wanted to go out and my mother screamed and cried, “No I’m not finished yet!” The whole time I was both watching the person and being the person in the tower- which happens a lot in my dreams- and then the sister told her she couldn’t hold me any longer, “She wants to get out,” she announced as if that desire alone was the key to the years and years of being locked in. So we went down the long winding stairs and out into the open which was dark and more frightening than the tower in it’s newness and then I realized all at once when my sister and the neighbors were shouting to be careful- I realized that my mother hadn’t wanted to let me out because I couldn’t keep my feet on the ground! I was flying sort of , more like levitating or floating with each step a little higher, only I knew I had the full capability to soar but I didn’t want to because they were shouting and I sensed their fear and so I held back with the full knowledge that the braid had been sewn to keep me from flying away no matter how far I roamed.

Last night I dreamt that I was at my dream house, on Diamond Avenue, and in front of our home a tree had split. It just split off from the roots, I couldn’t see any reason why. There wasn’t anything wrong with it it just left the roots and that was that.